Lithium Iron Phosphate - Lawsuit Settlement

Lawsuit Settlement

Because this novel material could make an important energy storage contribution to PHEV, HEV, and BEVs, significant interest has developed in its patent history. The first challenge of commercial products is patent infringement. Many of the pioneering companies in this field have exhaustive and thorough patent maps of various olivine formulations and preparations. Follow on patents often fall within these patent maps. The first major case of an expensive settlement is the lawsuit between NTT Japan and the University of Texas-Austin (UT). In October 2008, NTT announced that they would settle the case in the Japan Supreme Civil Court with UT, by paying to UT 30 million US dollars. As part of the agreement UT agreed that NTT did not steal the information and NTT will share its NTT’s patents of LFP materials with UT. NTT’s patent is also for an olivine LiFePO4 (LFP), with the general chemical formula of AyMPO₄ (A is for alkali metal and M for the combination of Co and Fe.). This compound is what BYD is using now. (BYD gained substantial media exposure after Warren Buffett’s announcement of investing in BYD’s LFP hybrid vehicle project.) Although chemically the materials are nearly the same, from the viewpoint of patents, AyMPO₄ of NTT is different from the initial LiMPO₄ materials covered by the UT. A main difference is that the AyMPO₄ has higher capacity than LiMPO₄, although since the patents were matter of composition based, the differences in performance were not totally germane. At the heart of the case was that NTT engineer - Okada Shigeto - who worked in the labs at UT developing the material - was suspected of stealing UT’s business secrets and used them when he returned to Japan.